


Embers

by jennandblitz



Series: Just a Jeepster for Your Love [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1996 Sadness, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Canon Compliant, Hopeful Ending, M/M, POV Remus Lupin, Sad, inspired by rp, just lots of sadness, perhaps?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 01:28:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19189138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennandblitz/pseuds/jennandblitz
Summary: It's 1996. Sirius is trapped within the house of his old nightmares and Remus has just returned from an Order mission that ran on far too long. Has it been too long?





	Embers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wilteddaisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilteddaisy/gifts).



> Inspired by my luv Lotta's most flawlessly emotional and heartbreaking RP threads as "apathetic, sardonic, wine-drenched" OotP!Sirius-which is just so perfectly on point. Specifically so, [this thread](https://bringblackback.tumblr.com/post/185460148746/hey-padfoot-how-are-you-remus-returning) and [this thread](https://bringblackback.tumblr.com/post/185462696626/trying-to-rekindle-your-friendship-with-remus-i). Go and read them and cry at how good they are, please and thank you.

Remus sighs the kind of sigh that dredges up the silt of his being and pulls right from his toes up to the well in his chest. It feels like he sighs more often than he doesn’t nowadays, only compounded by the fact 12 Grimmauld Place has a kind of depressing fog that settles over it.

He should go straight for a shower, or to a real bed, or some of Molly’s cooking, or a debrief with Dumbledore. But they aren’t even on his mind. Remus goes straight for Sirius.

It’s almost like his body knows which way to go, pulling him through the maze of hallways and parlour rooms, waiting rooms, antechambers, to find the owner of the house. Grimmauld Place is awful, but Remus stays here because it’s… because it’s home. Because there’s no place he’d rather be. It’s not the house though is it? It couldn’t be the house, not with the way Walburga’s portrait still screams if he comes too close, or there’s that pile of books in the library that might set him on literal fire.

It’s Sirius. He’s _home_. He’s been _home_ for Remus since they boarded the train in September 1971, in one way or another. He’d spent fourteen years feeling _homeless_ in more ways than one, whilst Sirius was in Azkaban, drifting aimlessly and trying to ignore the great crater in his heart that grieved for James, for Lily, for Peter, for Sirius—for _home_.

Remus finds him in an old room, sprawled with his legs over the arm of a large, overstuffed settee, with a bottle of pinot noir in his hand. The wine is probably older than either of them, one of Orion’s stores, from the way the label looks from here. Remus has been trying to guess Sirius’ mood depending on the price and quality of his alcohol for the past two years, maybe more if he thinks back to their last few years of school. Lately, he has no idea what Sirius is thinking.

But still, regardless, despite it all, Remus’ soul seems to breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of him. Still here, after all of this. “Hey, Padfoot… how are you?”

Sirius is raising the bottle to his lips when he sees Remus and the shock flitters across his face. Remus searches those aristocratic features for something else too but he’s not sure if he sees it. “Moony!” He swallows. “You’re alive.”

Remus nods and steps into the room, shrugging his shoulders in response.

“Me?” Sirius says, as if he’s remembering he’s been asked a question. “Oh, I’m grand.” It’s a lie, it’s a lie and Remus can do _nothing_ about it and it makes him ache. How can Sirius be okay, in this place, in the place where all his horrors started?

Remus closes the distance between them, aching to try and do something to help but he doesn’t know what that is. There have been walls between them, Azkaban walls, Shrieking Shack walls, Grimmauld Place walls, for so long. He gingerly sits on the other side of the sofa, letting out a small sigh at the little comfort the seat gives him.

Sirius eyes him warily. Remus recognises it; Sirius’ lips pressed together like he’s holding in a burst of words. “Did you know—” he starts, gesturing to his face with the mouth of the wine bottle— “that I shaved for you?”

Remus frowns. Sirius has a beard, vaguely unkempt and straggly, but still, somehow, so damn handsome. He thinks this might be one of Sirius’ tricks, the way he manages to poke and prod at every one of Remus’ sore spots. He rubs his hand over his own stubbled cheek self-consciously and opens his mouth to question Sirius.

“I’ll admit it doesn’t look like it, because…” Sirius continues, his voice light and conversational, but Remus can see the flare of pain in his eyes. Sirius swigs the wine. “It was a week and a half ago, when you were _supposed_ to get back from—” Sirius’ mouth tightens. Remus recognises it, perhaps he might scream or cry. It’s like he recognises all these puzzle pieces of Sirius Black, but he doesn’t understand how they fit together any more— “your mission.”

“Padfoot…” Remus inhales sharply against the shard of pain in the pit of his stomach. The mission had turned from three days to nearly two weeks and he couldn’t do anything about it, just helplessly drawn along the waves of it until it spat him back out onto the shores of Grimmauld Place. He’s not sure if Sirius is jealous Remus gets to be out and about, or if he’s upset they haven’t seen each other for two weeks. He hopes it’s the latter, but his brain insists it’s the former. “I’m sorry.”

Sirius shakes his head. “Anyway.” He looks at Remus properly for the first time, instead of just blithely over his shoulder, and the look _sears_. His cool, grey eyes are sharp and blurred at the same time, sharp with emotion, swimming with vintage pinot and Remus recognises the pain there but he can’t do anything about it. “Welcome home.”

Remus practically flinches at the tone of his voice and briefly closes his eyes. “I’m going to shower… find some food…” The words seem hard to eke out between them. What he _wants_ to do is wrap his arm around Sirius’ shoulder, press his mouth into Sirius’ hair and tell him that he’s sorry for everything, that they can just have each other, and _that_ can be home, not Grimmauld, not this hellhole.

Sirius raises an eyebrow and takes another drink of his wine. The nonchalant shrug of his shoulder says _fine, do what you will._ Remus nods and stands. Before he can think otherwise, he touches Sirius’ shoulder—he’s wearing that Merlin-awful shirt—and squeezes slightly. Sirius stills and watches him, but he doesn’t say anything as Remus slopes out of the room.

The plumbing in Grimmauld is enchanted to only give cold water to _mudbloods_ or _half-breeds_ , Remus is sure. He shivers through an awful shower, rumbling pipes and vaguely ominous splutterings from the faucet, but the water refreshes him as much as it can. He redresses in that out-of-body way one does when they do not care for themselves. Sirius drinks away his troubles, Remus internalises his until they turn into a diamond of mistrust and loathing settled in his stomach. Remus thinks if those diamonds were real he’d be rich. That’s the irony, isn’t it?

Unable to face Molly yet, the kitchen and the incessant questions and too-sweet kindness, Remus retraces his steps to find Sirius again. Perhaps he can share the rest of that bottle of wine and Remus can pretend it’s 7th Year and they are tipsy and they will kiss under the privacy of their drapes. Instead, he rounds the corner and hears voices from the room.

— “Tough to reconnect, after all these years, I imagine…” It’s Emmeline, one of the few left alive from the first Order, one who remembers how it all was before it went wrong, one who had been at the Gryffindor Quidditch parties and probably saw the way Remus and Sirius looked at each other, all raw, overflowing enthusiasm and unbridled affection.

She also knew how it went so wrong. “Or is it just like the old days?”

Sirius laughs one of his hollow laughs. “Moony can never be rid of me. Not truly.”

Remus presses himself into the doorway of another room and hates himself for listening.

“As for rekindling what we had…” Sirius is slurring a little. How many bottles of Orion’s pinot has he gotten through tonight, this week, this month? “Rekindling demands both kindling and… fire.” His voice catches strangely on the last word and Remus’ heart aches.

Fire. Oh, they had that in abundance at school, didn’t they? All fire, all heat and oxygen and fuel, all sparks and grabbing at each other in alcoves or the Prefect’s bathroom or later, in that little shitty flat they rented in Muggle London. Never talked about, never broached without wine or firewhisky, but fiery all the same. Fire to stoke them both into the whirlwind of affection and mistrust and lingering, looming betrayal that had burst like wildfire in the Spring of 1981.

“And it’s—it’s a bit rough when you’ve only got the kindling.”

Remus shuts his eyes and lets his head drop back against the door. What was that supposed to mean? How were they meant to find the spark that had been buried under twelve years of pain and hurt.

Emmeline clears her throat. “Yeah—um—oh, Remus. Hello…” He hadn’t even realised he’d been walking down the hallway until Emmeline calls him and he stops, like he’s caught after curfew.

“Hi, Emmeline. How are you?”

“Fine, yeah… well enough. I’ll—go and see Moody then, shall I?” She looks back through the doorway to where Sirius is on the sofa. “Good to see you, Sirius. Take care.”

Sirius snorts—Remus only hears it with the wolf’s hearing—and it sounds abjectly painful. Remus steps aside to let Emmeline pass, and then steps into the doorway himself. Sirius doesn’t look like he’s moved, but the bottle in his hand is full and there is an empty one at his feet.

“Moony,” He says—slurs—and gestures with the bottle.

Remus steps in the room and shuts the door behind him. He wordlessly crosses over to the sofa and sits at the other end, tilting his head to watch Sirius. Sirius’ eyes are swimming and his mouth is stained red from the wine. “No fire?”

Sirius drinks wine in lieu of an answer. Remus tracks the way his throat bobs around the swallow. In 1980 that sight would’ve set him aflame, had him sprawling across the sofa to kiss Sirius square on his wine-stained mouth and slide his hand down the planes of that lithe body.

But there are still embers there. Still something that makes Remus watch, that makes him ache with fourteen years of longing to remember what that mouth tastes like. He’s seen Sirius watching too. Sirius watching him when he’s at the kitchen table in animated conversation with Charlie Weasley or Kingsley. The way he looks away with a pinkish flush on his sharp cheeks when Remus glances up and sees him watching. Embers to be coaxed back to life, gently brought back to licking flames and roaring fires. There is potential, perhaps.

“Maybe,” Sirius says, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

Remus holds his hand out for the wine—Sirius passes it to him after a moment’s hesitation—and takes a long draught. “Yeah.” Remus sighs and lets his head drop back against the sofa. “We had a lot of fire, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, we did.” Sirius reaches out and prises the bottle from Remus’ hand. His fingers are cool and Remus shivers.

“Yeah? Gone now though, right…” Remus tilts his head to the side and cracks an eye open to peer at Sirius. The other man is watching him with fever-bright eyes. “Extinguished.”

Sirius doesn’t look away from their eye-contact through a hefty pull of the wine bottle. It seems like hours crawl by, just staring at each other, just watching, waiting, waiting for something. Sirius shifts and a lock of his hair slips from his shoulder and Remus’ gaze flickers to the triangle of exposed flesh at the collar of his shirt. Sirius leans forward and puts a hand on Remus’ knee.

“Embers though, maybe.” Even if Sirius’ words are slurred, his eyes shining, it doesn’t matter. His cool fingers are on Remus’ knee and he’s looking at Remus like that, like it’s 1977 and they remember what it is like to live.

Remus reaches out and laces their fingers. “Embers.”


End file.
